Thursday, June 9, 2016

Creative Commentary: Utilizing Social Media for your Creative Career - 6/9/16



Hello Creatives!

With the boom of social media making such an impact in our everyday culture and society, one can imagine how it could be a potentially useful tool for anyone with a creative career. In fact, I recently began working for an agency that does just that by marketing and managing businesses through social spaces.

Before this new beginning in my professional career, I looked to social media as a vehicle for marketing and engaging an audience with my own brand. I had to learn rules and strategies across multiple platforms and apps to work to my advantage to get me business and brand recognition. With this industry constantly growing and changing, I'm still learning and will continue to do so.

 Social Media strategies are different for everyone. For instance, a writer may not have as much of an advantage using Instagram for their business as a visual artist would. For musicians there is Sound Cloud, for videographers Vine might be preferable. It really depends on what kind of business you are, or if you are independent, and what your structure is.

I manage two brands with my boyfriend, Tobias. One of them is my own brand: Emily Bartos and the other is a collaboration between he and I called The Singular Fortean Society. While both are creative businesses/communities--they are very different and therefore have to be managed in social spaces very differently. I also try to have these partnered brands overlap wherever necessary to form a connection (especially because they are owned by the same people). I am going to attempt to describe how I manage these brands on social media in this post on the four apps we use the most as well as some quick go-to strategies for marketing on these platforms.

 

The Social Media Calendar

Developing a social media calendar is something I started doing recently within the last two months and it has been going very well so far. It helps to keep things organized and know what content you are going to put out there. For instance, I blog for Emily Bartos 5 days a week Monday-Friday and keep the weekends for free time. I try to schedule things for every social media platform that we use so we aren't coming up with things on-the-fly in a time crunch and I hate the feeling like I have to be tied to my phone and posting things constantly. The blog breakdown is as follows:
  1. Mondays: #MonsterMonday - I produce a digital illustration of a monster to be shared and blogged about with Singular Fortean and Emily Bartos. Singular Fortean also has a "Monster of the Month" so I stick to that theme. On Singular Fortean, we focus on information about the monster whereas on my creative blog I talk about the artistic side of it.
  2. Tuesdays: #BoudoirBlog - Since I specialize in Boudoir Photography, I reserve this day for posts about boudoir photography whether it be featured sessions, client resources, event information, question and answer, philosophy, and more. Since I only photograph Boudoir on a very part-time basis, this keeps related content out there that builds momentum and engagement for my services.
  3. Wednesdays: #AskEmilytheArtist - Unfortunately, this has been the least successful campaign on my blog. I started it for a few reasons: to engage and communicate with an audience, to use my brand as a vessel for focusing on the art community in our society, to utilize Twitter and SnapChat more (Facebook and Instagram get the most engagement and followers), and to also because I genuinely want to talk to my followers. As a person and business owner, I am very open and happy to talk about anything. I've discovered that getting your audience to interact is very difficult, and honestly, I've been asking close friends to ask these questions to get this campaign started. We'll see where it goes, but I haven't given up on this yet.
  4. Thursdays: Creative Commentary - This is what this post is. It's all about being a creative in terms of lifestyle, career, freelancer, and so on.
  5. Fridays : Freestyle - I blog about whatever I want. I usually pre-write all my blogs before the week begins so they're ready to go and I can just post them as they are scheduled. Because this day is reserved for whatever content I want, I'll often have an idea and then write about it randomly. This includes shoot features, personal posts, projects I've been working on, etc. There are usually a few drafts of these ready to go.

 

Instagram

Now, as a visual artist, Instagram is my favorite. I'm addicted, I think it's the best, but that may not be the fact for you. The Singular Fortean Society is both visual and heavy in text, so that brand does not get much of an audience from Instagram like my personal brand does. In addition, the Singular Fortean brand is in a VERY specific niche. I'm working on a schedule with common daily hashtags with both brands to gain followers, an audience, and brand awareness. According to the metrics, both brands do not gain much direct website traffic through instagram, but in terms of engaging an audience--it works very well. I may get a direct message on this app, but then I can usually get them to my website from there. Aside from getting people to our website, Instagram is great for getting people familarized and connected to our brands. I post on @emily_bartos several times a day, but with @singularfortean, my goal is one post a day Monday-Friday, as well as Sunday. Here's the current schedule I use for posting on instagram as @singularfortean:
  1. Monday: #MonsterMonday - This brand overlaps with the @emily_bartos brand. I make a monster and this is posted on both accounts.
  2. Tuesday - I try to share imagery of the paranormal in popular culture and society. For instance, we found a brand of barley wine called Bigfoot, so I shared a picture of that.
  3. Wednesday: #ForteanPhotography - Toby lets me write on the blog! I examine photographs of the paranormal and use my expertise in photography to determine if they are a hoax, explainable, or unexplainable. 
  4. Thursday: #TBT - I share all the famous old images of paranormal cases such as the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage, the Surgeon's Photo of the Loch Ness Monster, etc.
  5. Friday: #FridayFreestyle: I make sure to at least come up with some silly "Hello weekend" or "TGIF" graphic wishing our followers a great weekend.
  6. Saturday - I take these days off from posting unless we are doing an investigation and I share photos as we go about those adventures.
  7. Sunday: #Sunday Funday - We find a cartoon having to do with the paranormal, and try to keep it themed with the Monster of the Month if we can! It's a nice, easy lighthearted blog entry and post that keeps things fun and then we go enjoy the rest of your weekend.
With Instagram and twitter, it is usually in your best interest to learn trending topics as per day of the week. This blog post had some great examples, and you can learn them and study them and figure out how they best apply to your brand. As you post a hashtag to the caption on instagram, the app will autofill options for that hashtag and it even shows how many posts are tagged with it. If the tag you use is flexible, it might be best to select the option that gives you the most traffic.


Twitter

Aside from Facebook, Twitter is probably the most flexible platform. Any brand can work with it. You can type whatever you want with 140 characters (you do get less if you attach a photo, though). Twitter is very news-heavy and very fast-paced. It's a great way to share little bits of information, but if you want to use it to your advantage it is best to keep up on it. How do we use it?
  • Sharing links: If a new blog post or event is up, we link the post and send it out to our followers. It's a quick and easy way to reach out to people and make your content accessible. I try to link our websites as much as possible as our goal is to get as many people there as possible.
  • Retweeting: There is an option that lets you share and post another user's tweet to your own feed. It's very similar to sharing on Facebook as the post is not original to you. I often retweet any art-related posts I feel fit with my brand and my voice, especially if I feel my followers may find the content interesting. Toby runs the @singularfortean Twitter, and he always retweets the latest in paranormal news. Also, in following related accounts, he has a constant feed of news that he can research and write about.
  • @Reply: An @Reply is when you tag a user in a post. An example of this might be @ylimesotrab: Please check out @singularfortean at www.singularfortean.com or vice versa. This tweet would tag @singularfortean for reasons of communication, credit, and connecting others. These also work with direct public communication. For instance, I could tweet: @singularfortean How are you today? and he could reply: I'm great, @ylimesotrab! How are you? Dumb examples, but you get the picture.
  • Connect to other apps: I linked my Twitter account to my Instagram account so I can kill two birds with one stone and have the content posted to both. You can usually do this on any app, and the interfaces make it easy to post everywhere from one app.
Like blogging, I found the best way to not feel like I am constantly tweeting is to pre-write and schedule tweets. Actually, this is how the account managers handle their clients' accounts at the agency I work at. As an example, Toby has knowledge of several greats in the Fortean field and will share their quotes when he can't think of anything to tweet. I personally will tweet addressing my audience asking them to interact with me and checking in with how they are doing. If you want to open the doors to communication, Twitter is one of the best ways.


SnapChat

Of all my apps, this is the one that I have deleted and redownloaded out of annoyance the most. I initially dismissed this app as something for people to send "dumb selfies" on. Recently, I've discovered it is a really fun tool for both of our brands! We use it for Singular Fortean to share live photos and video as we investigate. It's a really cool way for followers to watch and come with us when they watch our SnapChat story. With my personal brand, I show things like unboxing orders, turning the camera on myself to talk about what's going on with projects and events, and behind the scenes of photoshoots and my creative work. 


Facebook

This is easily the most complex and most useful form of social media. It is also more prominent than any other app out there, but that goes without saying. I will give a brief overview of how to use it, but there may have to be a part 2 to this blog to talk about paid reaches and Facebook's ever-changing content share algorithm. How can you use Facebook for your business? I cannot even begin to count the ways:
  • Pages: You can make your own page for your business. It lets you share content, advertise, communicate with an audience, market yourself....it's easily how I've gotten most of my business referrals. If you are a creative looking to promote yourself, having a Facebook page is almost a must.
  • Groups: Facebook lets you create forum communities! I recently made one for prospective boudoir clients to communicate with each other, ask questions, share resources, etc. You can find various communities based on interests and careers as well. These present great networking opportunities.
  • Marketplace: You can sell stuff on Facebook! It'll connect you with friends of friends and make it easy for people to find what you're selling.
  • Events: Facebook has its own amazing events calendar that you can create events for and invite people to them. It sends out reminders closer to the day so people can remember that it is happening.

 

Quick Hacks 

Dead air on a social media feed is not good for your business. This world is buzzing and in order to keep your audience engaged, you have to post regularly. The average lifespan of a facebook post is 3 hours. It's possible to have a block on what material to share with your followers.

One thing I do is search my own news feed for relevant content to share on my page. I see a post with a unicorn, I like it and it fits with my brand. I post it to my page to keep up with the momentum of the activity on social. People respond well to user generated content (UGC) because they can relate to it and find it more approachable to interact with.

I also try to think of imagery that would make good clickbait. If I post photos on a blog from a hike with the dog, I will certainly have the link image be of the dog because he is adorable and people are more likely to click on a cute puppy than trees or whatever else. Since I also share sneak peeks of client images, I pay attention to the analytics to figure out which ones people "liked" the most and then use those photos on ads and blogs.


Social media is crazy and out there making an insane impact...we can use this to our advantage! I could write a whole series on social media in this blog (and I probably will) and there are things about it that I haven't even discovered yet. It's a whole (social) world out there, and as it changes and grows with other things on this planet I am going to do whatever it takes to study the technology to keep my brand current and accessible. You should, too!

Thanks for bearing with me through this beastly blog post,

xx emily

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Emily Bartos

 The Singular Fortean Society:
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